A LOCAL politician was sentenced to life in prison in eastern China after ploughing his luxury sedan into a crowd, killing four people and injuring eight others.
The case again highlighted the dangers of China’s tradition of mixing booze and business, as the April incident happened after the defendant, 48-year-old Yang Shuzhong, had been drinking at a banquet.
A court in Zhejiang province convicted him on Tuesday of endangering public security, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Yang drove his BMW down one of the busiest streets in the city of Taizhou, smashing into people and cars and ignoring shouts from bystanders to stop.
He was a deputy in the Taizhou City People’s Congress, a Communist Party member, and chairman of the Huali Medical Chemical Co Ltd at the time of his arrest.
The public has increasingly called for more severe penalties for drunken drivers following a spate of lethal accidents.
In July last year, a court in southwest China’s Sichuan province handed down the first death sentence in the nation for drink driving to a man who killed four people in a car accident, but the sentence was overturned on appeal.
The man was later sentenced to life in prison.
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